Samsung 3D Claims Technically True, But Misleading, NAD Says

In the ongoing active-versus-passive 3D TV advertising war being waged through the Council of Better Business Bureaus’ National Advertising Division (NAD), NAD recommended last week that Samsung discontinue certain claims regarding the superiority of its active 3D TV over passive 3D TV models in print, online and video advertising. The recommendations follow a challenge by LG that Samsung’s advertising misrepresents the technological characteristics of 3D TV in an attempt to disparage the 3D and 2D picture quality produced by LG’s passive 3D TVs.

Specifically, NAD urged Samsung to refrain from “express” claims that passive 3D TVs “with patterned film on the screen, will not be able to deliver the detail” of Samsung active 3D TVs and that “passive 3D technology … effectively cut 1080p resolution in half (540p to each eye),” according to NAD’s 22-page report. NAD concluded that the evidence provided by Samsung “was not sufficient to provide a reasonable basis” for its message that Samsung active 3D TVs provide superior picture quality to passive 3D TVs, “including LG Cinema 3D televisions,” it said. NAD is widely viewed as the advertising industry’s self-regulatory forum.

Regarding video resolution, LG said that Samsung’s claim that 3D images produced by passive 3D technology are only half-resolution is “logical only if Samsung also acknowledges that its active 3D televisions deliver zero resolution to each eye during half of the active 3D viewing experience.” All active 3D TVs produce a 3D image using alternate-frame sequencing to alternately flash a 1080p resolution image between the left and right eyes, LG said. In the active 3D experience, one eye receives 1,080 lines of information, followed by a black frame containing zero lines of information as the 1080p image flickers back and forth, from eye to eye, LG said. The brain then fuses the alternate images to create the 3D effect in 1080p resolution, it said.

In passive 3D TV, a 540p image is displayed to each eye simultaneously. The viewer receives 540 lines of odd-line information to the left eye, while the right eye receives 540 lines of even-line information, a process that is then reversed, LG noted. Comparing the passive model to active, LG said, “at no time does either eye receive a black frame, or zero lines of 3D image information.” As a result, LG said, “passive and active technology display the identical amount of 3D image information during a frame of 3D imagery."

LG cited a report by Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMate Technologies, from the “3D TV Display Technology Shoot-Out,” conducted by DisplayMate in 2011, which stated that the “time-honored method of confusing consumers is to introduce irrelevant and misleading information. In my opinion,” Soneira said, “that is precisely what Samsung has been doing with regard to LG’s 3D FPR passive glasses technology in order to distract from honest and fair 3D performance and picture quality evaluations and comparisons.” Soneira said separate left and right eye images are “completely irrelevant” because they are not seen that way by “normal viewers with two eyes,” but are instead combined in the viewer’s brain by “binocular image fusion” to create the perception of a 3D image.

LG asserted that Samsung’s point-of-sale video for active 3D TVs uses a “similar distortion” to make the “implied claim” that Samsung’s active 3D TVs provide superior picture quality. The video shows two 2D images, captured only through the left lens of active 3D and passive 3D glasses, which Samsung described as “actual image through left lens of respective glasses.” Samsung made the claim that its active technology delivers “the highest resolution to each eye,” while “competitors’ passive systems only deliver half the resolution creating noticeable black lines on the screen,” LG said in its complaint. LG argued that consumers will “reasonably interpret” Samsung’s presentation as an accurate representation of 3D quality, when in fact, viewers can’t experience 3D images with only one eye. Based on the data given, consumers “will not understand that the images are merely 2D images that omit half of the image data required to see a 3D image,” LG said. “Thus, the only possible purpose of this video is to falsely denigrate passive 3D picture quality,” LG said.

In reference to supporting reports by video industry experts Peter Putman, Joe Kane and Martin Banks that Samsung cited, LG said Samsung’s conclusions were “unpersuasive.” Regarding Putman’s report, LG maintained that Samsung “twists this report’s carefully worded conclusion” that active shutter glasses preserve full resolution to each eye in both 2D and 3D modes but passive TVs using FPRs only deliver half resolution. The report reaffirms that passive 3D simultaneously delivers 540p of 2D information to each eye during half a frame of 3D imagery, “but says nothing about the resolution of picture quality of actual 3D images perceived by viewers,” LG said.

Kane’s report uses close-up screen photographs of test patterns, which LG said were “irrelevant, misleading and inappropriate” for the evaluation of 3D picture quality and sharpness “because 3D vision only occurs in the brain.” The Banks report relies on a test methodology using test charts, rather than 3D content, which LG said is “hardly adequate support for Samsung’s broad claims that its active 3D TVs provide double the resolution and superior picture quality over passive 3D TVs.” The Banks study determined that Samsung had higher 3D TV resolution at distances of 1.5 and 3 times picture height, which LG said, is “far less than the viewing conditions found in most households.” Samsung’s own recommended 3D viewing distances are 3 times or more the height of the screen, LG noted.

Regarding Samsung YouTube video claims that its active 3D TVs are “40 percent brighter” than passive 3D TVs, and that passive TVs use more electricity, LG countered that its 3D TVs “are often brighter and consume less energy” than comparable active 3D TVs due to their “Light Boost” technology. LG maintained that annual energy costs of LG 3D TVs are “similar to comparable Samsung active 3D TVs."

The Samsung YouTube video includes references to viewing angles being inferior with passive 3D technology. LG claimed that references to inferior “viewing angle” don’t specify whether that’s horizontal, vertical or both. A voiceover in the YouTube video refers to a vertical viewing angle range of 178 degrees for active 3D TVs and 20 degrees for passive 3D TVs, LG said, adding that the claim is “literally false” since LG 3D TVs provide a vertical viewing angle of “at least 26 degrees.” The video also referred to “blurry and dark 2D images” with passive TVs.

In a preliminary response, Samsung said the YouTube video claiming its active 3D TVs “are 40 percent brighter,” require less energy than passive 3D TVs and that passive models deliver “blurry and dark 2D images” had been “permanently discontinued.” Samsung said the video that received “a small number of views” was created by Samsung’s parent company in Korea and was never part of a U.S. marketing campaign.

Samsung rebuked documentation by Soneira of DisplayMate that two half-resolution (540p) images created by passive 3D are combined in the brain to form a single-full-resolution 1080p image, calling the position “the undocumented and unsubstantiated word of a ’theoretical physicist’ who has no training in vision science.” Samsung said it provided nine separate reports -- including the Banks and Kane reports and third-party reports from expert reviewers at Consumer Reports, HDTVTest.com, CNET.com and TrustedReviews.com. All of the reports and reviews, “without exception,” stated that the evaluated passive 3D TVs delivered less detailed 3D images than active models, Samsung said. And they all attributed the loss of detail with passive 3D to the spatial interlacing method used to display the respective 2D images to each eye, which “inarguably cut the source resolution in half,” Samsung said.

Martin Banks, Samsung’s expert and a professor of vision science at the University of California at Berkeley, said the two “half-resolution” images created by passive 3D technology “are not recombined in the brain to create a full-resolution image.” According to Banks, with Samsung’s active-shutter system, the “effective human visual resolution” is equal to the full resolution of the TV because “both eyes receive information from all the pixels” in the television. Banks’ study concludes that LG’s passive 3D approach achieves only half resolution to each eye and “there is no way it could have more than half resolution vertically.” Samsung maintained that evidence “conclusively proves” that the picture resolution of passive 3D TV is visibly less detailed than the 3D picture resolution generated by active 3D TVs.

On the claim that content used for testing was “artificial” and “irrelevant,” Samsung said the letter acuity test used in research is a “non-biased, worldwide standard” for vision professionals and motor vehicle departments to assess visual acuity. The company said the test is better suited to assessing display resolution differences “because it controls for artifacts that could be inherent to consumer 3D video content."

NAD, in its decision on Samsung resolution assertions, said, “At no time -- using either party’s technology -- are both eyes actually simultaneously receiving from the screen, full 1080p resolution,” observing that with both technologies “the brain takes over at some point to resolve the images delivered to it” as the last step in the viewer actually receiving a 1080p 3D image. “Ultimately,” NAD concluded, “the consumer receives full 3D imaging and is, therefore, capable of enjoying the 3D television experience with both parties’ technologies."

In its decision, NAD reaffirmed that an advertiser is responsible for “all reasonable interpretations of its claims, not just the messages it intends to convey.” NAD disagreed with Samsung’s position that its advertising made no claim about ultimate picture quality. In advertising, Samsung referred to “objectively demonstrated differences in vertical resolution” that are “more than merely theoretically significant.” The difference, Samsung said, translates to “significant observable differences in picture quality” and that those “differences in picture resolution are absolutely visible to the viewer at expert-recommended viewing distances."

The ads assert that Samsung claims about picture quality are true -- not comments of preference or opinion -- but NAD precedent states that while a claim “may be literally true, the context in which it is presented may still cause it to convey a message that is false or misleading to consumers.” In its ads, Samsung presented a “truthful technical aspect of passive versus active 3D technology, that, by itself, has questionable material relevance to the ultimate real-world quality” of a consumer’s 3D experience, NAD said.

NAD drew on experience with a DirecTV case in making its decision. DirecTV ads claimed its service offered “99.9 percent signal reliability,” NAD noted, which led consumers to believe that they could expect to receive DirecTV’s signal 99.9 percent of the time, when in fact that percentage referred to the transmission record coming from DirecTV’s uplink facility. In that case, NAD recommended that the ads be pulled after determining that the data were inapplicable to the implied message that the service would be delivered to or received by a consumer’s TV 99 percent of the time. That was “not the case,” it said.

Regarding Samsung’s visual of an actual left lens image from each manufacturer’s 3D glasses with the text overlay “Actual image through left lens of respective glasses,” NAD agreed with LG that the demonstration “grossly mischaracterizes the display of passive 3D ultimately and typically experienced by the consumer” when looking through both lenses. Neither company’s 3D glasses can accurately render a 3D image using only one lens, it said.

NAD sided with Samsung on the issue of viewing angle where the company maintained that LG’s passive 3D TVs have a limited vertical viewing angle of 20 degrees and that Samsung’s active TVs provide greater flexibility at various angles. NAD said Samsung’s claim was supported by Soneira’s Shoot-Out report that said passive glasses perform better “only up until about 20 degrees, when their crosstalk increases rapidly. For larger vertical angles,” he said, “active glasses perform much better.” NAD further stated that consumers would not reasonably interpret Samsung’s claim as meaning that Samsung’s active 3D TVs also provide a superior horizontal viewing angle to passive 3D TV.

In response to the findings, Samsung issued a statement saying it “strongly disagrees with NAD’s decision” and that its claims that active 3D technology is capable of delivering superior resolution compared with passive 3D TV “are fully supported by technical and scientific evidence.” Samsung said it also disagreed with NAD’s finding that while Samsung highlighted a truthful aspect of passive versus active 3D technology, it was not of “material relevance” to consumers. Samsung said it will comply, however, with NAD’s recommendations. With the launch of its 2012 TVs it is already in the process of transitioning marketing materials to the new lineup, the company said.

It’s not likely that jousting over 3D claims is over based on recent history. LG was called out in February by NAD for violating “procedures that govern the advertising industry’s system of self-regulation” by promoting to the manufacturers’ dealers the outcome of an NAD decision that was favorable to LG (CED Feb 7 p4). The week before, Sony was named for communicating to dealers a still-confidential decision recommending that LG stop running 3D TV ads (CED Feb 2 p8) claiming that consumers preferred LG passive 3D TVs to Samsung and Sony 3D TVs, claims that the NAD found largely to be “materially flawed.”